Last weekend I spoke at the Duncan family reunion out at the Diamond Bar Ranch, a legendary place I had never visited in all my years in Mohave County.
Tap Duncan (third from right) counting cows at the Hackberry shipping corrals.
Tap bought The Diamond Bar after leaving Idaho in 1894 and crossed with his wife and wagon and herd of horses at Bonelli Landing. By the way, Louis L'Amour claimed Tap taught him everything he knew about "cowboyin'."
Bonelli Landing on The Colorado where Tap and Black Jack Ketchum crossed.
My grandfather, Bob Guess, worked as a cowboy for Tap Duncan on this ranch in 1912, so the place has some historical interest for me.
Bob Guess
Most of this is in my book "The 66 Kid" which also features a photo of my mother sitting on the hood of a car at the Diamond Bar Ranch in 1933. She never really liked me telling everyone that we were related to "Big Foot" Wallace, "Black Jack" Ketchum and John Wesley Hardin but she encouraged me in everything else. In honor of my grandfather, my mother and Tap Duncan I have decided to offer this very personal book at a special price. Here you go:
Special offer on "The 66 Kid," ad designed by Rebecca Edwards
"All good biographers struggle with a particular tension between the scholarly drive to assemble facts as dispassionately as possible and the novelistic urge to find shape and meaning within the apparently random circumstances of a life."
—Richard Holmes, "The Long Pursuit"
Tap killed a man here in Bruneau Idaho. Self defense. My Grandfather was on the inquiry board. The man he shot in self defense was Bill Hayes. I have the news paper clipping.
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